


That Was... Late

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, sharon carter appreciation month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-09-27 20:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10048628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: Sharon Carter is assigned to go undercover to protect Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. She knows it's just an assignment, and she can't let it get personal, but as the two get to know each other as neighbors and friends, it gets harder to keep up the facade of professionalism.





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a trick to aging things, and Sharon takes the sticker that will be on her mailbox and ages it every day, a little at a time. It has to look as if she has lived in the apartment for months, but she is patient, and she is dutiful, and she knows the trick to aging things. She knows more tricks than that, but she doesn’t let on about such things.

Fury sends her a text when Rogers leaves the Triskellion, and she snaps the sticker in place and roughs it up a bit more before running upstairs.

When Rogers walks up, carrying nothing but a cardboard box, she pops out of her door and flashes him a smile. “Hi.”

He grins at her politely and introduces himself as Steve, the neighbor moving into... He grins again and points to the door across from hers.

She pretends to be surprised, like it’s the biggest coincidence in the world. She wonders if he knows there’s no such thing as coincidence. She smiles and nods. “Wow. Do you want help moving in?”

He holds up the box. “This is it.”

“That’s it?” She wonders if he’s already been up and she’s missed him, then realizes that no, that’s all he has to his name after coming out of the ice. She forces a smile, tries hard to make it seem genuine. She feels like she’s smiling too much. “Looks like I offered to help just in time, then. But hey, if you need anything, I’m right across the hall.” She glances at her door. “Obviously.”

His grin widens, and she feels a little less like she’s fucking up every minuscule part of this assignment so far. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They pass, and he pauses outside his door. “Actually, I might take you up on that now. I’m... new to town. Where’s the nearest grocery store?”

She gives him directions to the Jewish mom and pop grocery around the corner. It’s a rundown place, half-full of faded glory, half-full of the threat of foreclosure. It’s the sort of place where the owners go without paychecks to keep the place open. But it’s within walking distance, and the people are nice enough.

He thanks her, says to let him know if he’s ever too loud, and disappears inside the apartment.

She heads downstairs and realizes she’ll have to find something to do to justify leaving her apartment. What a great start to her biggest career assignment so far.

* * *

The apartment isn’t like his old one in Brooklyn at all. It’s large and quiet, too damn quiet, so quiet that his footsteps echo in the rooms.

It’s inconceivably empty.

Fury gave him some money for furnishings and other needs until his backpay gets sorted out, and even though Steve is against using it on principle - if food and gas prices took time to get used to, furniture is impossible - he heads out.

He can’t bring himself to buy the brand-new, self-assembly pieces in the stores where all the lights are too bright. He notices that all of the stores decorate with one to three colors at most. Everything is simplified, streamlined.

He wanders the city, sometimes on foot, sometimes on his bike, familiarizing himself with the streets and the history. He reads the newspapers, teaches himself about the internet. Despite his nearly-perfect memory - sometimes too perfect - he keeps a notebook of things he wants to learn about. It grounds him, steadies him. He likes having something to hold on to, something solid.

He sees his neighbor every so often. She comes and goes a lot. He sees her leave her apartment wearing scrubs one day and says, without thinking, “I didn’t know you were a nurse!” He remembers his mother, dressed in her starched white dress, the cloth hard to the touch.

She jumps. “Uh, yeah. Kind of new to it, though.”

“My mom was a nurse. It’s a rough job.”

She brightens a little, and he congratulates himself. He can’t really talk to women, but he must be doing all right. “Tell me about it. The hours are insane.”

“You guys still get too little pay?” You guys, he thinks proudly. Not you ladies. Slang in the modern age. He’s learning.

He’d only had to mention dames and broads and the like to Maria Hill once before getting set straight. And it only took one screw up in front of Maria Hill to be set straight very, very firmly.

“Always.” She rolls her eyes. “But then, that’s always the way with the things people need, have you noticed? Teachers, nurses... They’ve actually done studies that show that not only are women paid less, but when the majority of field are women, pay goes down for that field across the board. It’s-” She waves an arm, and he recognizes a rant in the making. But her eyes catch sight of her keys, and her mouth freezes without any sound coming out. She pauses, then snaps her mouth shut. “Sorry. I’ve got to go before I’m late for work.”

He nods and moves aside for her.

She’s halfway down the stairs when she shouts up, “I’m Kate, by the way!”

“Steve!” he shouts back. He has no idea if she’s heard, but she’s already late for work so he doesn’t try to make sure. Instead, he lets himself into his apartment, pulls out the laptop, and tries to find the studies on women’s pay that she’d mentioned. He reads for hours, mostly because he has nothing else to do, and the subject is enough to boil the blood in his veins. He’d always known women got paid less, and if his mother had made a living wage, maybe she- well, okay. Maybe she wouldn’t have lived longer, but she could have lived better. Somewhere other than the slums.

When she comes back that night, her feet dragging on the stairwell, he lets himself out of the apartment. “Hey. Kate, right?”

She blinks at him, her face changing slowly into recognition. She looks exhausted. “Yeah. Steve, isn’t it?”

He nods and leans against the wall, then realizing that probably looks preposterous and stands up straight. Now he probably looks too much like Captain America. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. I just- I had some time today, so I looked up that stuff. About pay for women. It’s really fascinating. Sucks for you guys, though.”

She stares at him like she isn’t sure what to do with that, and he mentally kicks himself.

“Uh, I was just going to check out that diner around the corner. Want to join me? My treat.”

She groans a little. “As much as I’d love to, I’m going to go soak in a bath and crawl into bed for the next we-” She lifts her arm, studies her watch in a way that says she’s had her eyes open for too long, and says, “four hours.”

He whistles. “You’ve got to be back at work in four hours?”

That gets him a faint grin. “I wish. But it’s going to take a while to get there in morning traffic. Maybe I’ll take the subway and take a nap on the way.”

“I’d offer you a ride, but I’ve got a bike. I wouldn’t want you to fall asleep and fall off.”

She raises an eyebrow. “No, I wouldn’t want that. Hey, can I ask you a question?”

Bullets could be flying at him, and he’d handle that better than women asking him questions. He doesn’t know why it worries him so much. In his youth, it just meant they were asking if Bucky was available. After the experiment, the questions... got different. Uncomfortably different. “Uh, sure.”

“What do you do for a living? Just- you seem to hang around a lot. Are you some sort of lobbyist?”

Steve almost laughs, because the question is so harmless. And then he realizes that he can’t say, “I’m Captain America,” because he doesn’t want to lose the normalcy of living in an apartment. He doesn’t want to lose having his neighbors say hi to him and tell him the best places in the area to eat. He likes the anonymity, the way no one here stares at him for too long.

“Just, you have the ability to take me to work if I can stay awake that long, and you... seem to be around a lot, is all.”

Because his life is empty and is nothing but work, and they don’t always need him. “I’m a SHIELD agent,” he says, a little too loud suddenly after so much silence. Or had there been that much silence? Maybe it had felt longer than it was.

“Oh,” she says, looking taken aback. “Okay. Well, if you ever get banged up, you know where to find me.”

His shoulder relax, and he nods. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

She yawns so widely her jaw pops, and she shakes her head. “Sorry. That- It’s not you.”

He grins and waves a hand to her door. “Don’t worry about it. Get some rest. I’ll see you around eventually, I’m sure.”

The next two times he hears her leave her apartment or return, he’s careful to stay inside and stay quiet. He might not have a life, but it’s nice to think someone might believe he does.

* * *

She isn’t the only SHIELD agent in the building. Ostensibly, she’s the one in charge, and as grateful as she is for the opportunity to prove herself, there are days where it’s hard to keep her eyes open and she’s sore and tired to the bone and would almost rather any of them take point.

She works 24-7, forcing herself to sleep no longer than four hours at a time, five if she’s treating herself. She holds meetings with the rest of the team at the Trisk, reviewing potential security risks, balancing who gets time off and where, making sure he’s watched and has someone at his back around the clock.

Sometimes, she feels grimy for lying to him. He’s a nice guy.

But the mission is to keep him safe. He could be a Care Bear or he could be Lord Voldemort. Her mission is to keep him safe. And seeing as he’s refused protection, they have to keep him safe on the sly.

She learns quickly how smart he is, how good his memory is. He never seems to forget a single detail about his neighbors, asking four-year-old Kayleigh how her stuffed giraffe, Spot, is doing and talking to Kayleigh’s mom about a recipe for bacon and chives biscuits - and really. Bacon and chives _biscuits?_ Kayleigh’s mom, listed in the files as Taylor Highcrest, is a monster.

She puts the kibosh on any agents going down to talk to agents in the surveillance van. She doesn’t want the civilians in the apartment building to talk and tip off Steve. When the agents are in their apartments, they pretend not to know each other. Most of the agents are older, but she’s pleased to note that they seem to be accepting her as their leader. Sure, they have some fun with her because Steve dropped by the Trisk one day and Sharon had to hide in a broom closet, but then Ryan Halpert almost runs into Steve in a mandatory SHIELD meeting and has to hide in the women’s bathroom and everyone teases him instead.

The team learns to work around Steve, setting up a group text and trading notes. Sharon consults Fury, then approaches Natasha Romanoff to ask her assistance. Slowly, they have an intelligence network put together, one geared toward protecting Steve without his knowledge.

Not that he needs it. He’s so unassuming out of costume that except for people thinking he’s hot, no one seems to notice him at all. Oh, and everyone thinks he’s nice. He’s popular enough in the neighborhood, but no one is out to kill Steve Rogers, or even to stalk him. They just respond to the inherent sadness he carries within him by giving him an extra sausage on his plate or telling him that he stopped by on a special deal day and thus gets a free cookie.

The neighborhood puts more emphasis on the value of food than money. Sharon’s kind of glad he chose to move here. After a while, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Only her team, Fury, and Natasha Romanoff know about the protection detail. Fury wants to keep the circle small. Sharon understands. But for a secret assignment, it means Fury has to justify her being in Washington. Sharon had wanted to stay close to Washington for personal reasons, so Fury gives her a “day job” to act as her cover. 

She works on Project Insight, in a middling position that is higher than people she graduated with. If not for her secret assignment, this is the position she would be given if SHIELD needed her to prove herself, and she’s grateful for the opportunity, the faith Fury is placing in her. 

Most of her team is also assigned to the project, she thinks to keep them close to home and out of trouble. She likes it, though, except for how some of her coworkers at Insight are idiots. It’s an easy enough job. Program computers and machinery to survey the populace. The goal is to monitor situations and prevent catastrophes. It’s what SHIELD is all about, on a scale they’ve never attempted before. But it’s easy enough. All they need is some coding knowledge, a dash of engineering knowledge, and that’s it.

But evidently, her coworkers didn’t get the memo. There are days she swears they don’t even know how to change a font. Originally, she starts out overseeing a station of three at Insight, but then some of her team - her home team, as she comes to think of them - ask her about something even though they’re assigned to another station, and what is she supposed to do? Not answer them?

So she ends up overseeing her team, and then helping out others to pick up the slack. She tells herself she’s making a difference, that she’s proving herself, that Peggy would be proud. She knows Fury notices. Her clearance level is inched upward, an upgraded pass arriving in her work box without comment. There are agents who get ceremonies when they graduate to the next level, just small affairs where they’re welcomed by the next level up. Or hazed, depending on how much people like them and want to stay on their good side. Sharon’s promotions go without any such ceremony. It’s the only thing she’d asked of Fury in her performance reviews: Allow her to prove herself on her own. Don’t draw attention to her last name or familial relations.

After her parents die and Peggy’s memory fades, leaving Sharon with no other family, Fury puts his own number down as her emergency contact. It’s nice, in a way, the way her boss becomes a weird sort of pseudo-family even though they never talk about it. There are the Commandos, of course, but that’s not the sort of information she can put on a form when she’s trying not to draw attention to how she’s related to _the_ Peggy Carter. And Fury assures her he’s Maria Hill’s contact, too. Apparently, when agents have no other family to look after them, Fury semi-adopts them. So long as she respects the boundaries in their relationship, she figures she’ll be fine.

Even though she may never see fighting as Steve’s unknown protector, she still has to keep up her skills. Just in case. So after working on Insight all day, she hits the gym at the Trisk after, working out and sparring until she can barely move. It’s those nights, when she has trouble walking up the stairs at the end of the day, that it’s hard to think this is all worth it and she dreams about nine-to-five jobs. It never gets very far, of course. She thinks she would die with a nine-to-five job. She can’t imagine working one when she knows what else is out there, what dangers are out there, what good she can do with SHIELD.

And then Steve is there, and she could swear he’s been waiting for her to come home. And damn, she isn’t sure what to do with _that_ possibility. He talks to her about women’s pay, and it takes her too long to remember the conversation they’d had - God, had it only been that morning? - but she rouses herself as best she can.

She utterly fails. She’s exhausted. As much as she wants food that doesn’t come from a microwavable box, she can’t do it. And she couldn’t anyway, because Steve is her mission, not her friend. He can’t be. She can’t let it be personal.

She collapses onto her bed without changing her clothes, and she wakes in the morning to find that she’s kicked one of her shoes off and the other is still halfway on her foot. She hurries to take a shower, packs some work clothes to change into at the Trisk, decides to skip her morning jog, and opens the door to run out when a Tupperware box catches her eye. It’s full of biscuits, and a sniff tells her to be cautious. She takes a careful bite and damns Taylor Highcrest to hell and back, because the chive and bacon biscuits are actually pretty good.


	2. Chapter 2

The nurse across the hall keeps in shape when she can. She jogs sometimes, usually early in the morning. She must have done track or something in college, because she’s in pretty good shape. He crosses paths with her every so often and is careful to give her space, given that his readings on sociology have expanded. He doesn’t want to seem like he notices her, doesn’t want to rouse any suspicions that he’s following her. He isn’t, of course. He just notices her sometimes. But he doesn’t want her to notice that he notices her. In many ways, he’s still the boy from Brooklyn.

Still, he can’t resist showing off sometimes. Not enough that she’ll guess he’s Captain America, obviously, but enough that she can see he’s a... highly qualified SHIELD agent. Yeah. That.

So he runs a little faster, back a little straighter. He doesn’t try to overlap her like he does the guy on the Mall. And really, he can’t help but try to overlap that guy, especially because the guy gets so upset about it - in a good-natured way, though. Steve likes to think it’s a kind of friendly rivalry. One day he’ll actually talk to the guy, but until then, it’s just a bit of fun.

Kate runs at a steady pace, but Steve sometimes thinks she’s noticed him. She doesn’t stare, but her head is turned in his direction a little too often for her not to have. And that’s a good thing, right? She doesn’t watch him quite the same way women watched Bucky back in the day, but it’s still got to be a good thing, right?

The only trouble is that he’s not so sure it’s a good thing that he can’t back out once she’s noticed him, can’t disappear into the bushes. No matter how much he might want to, he’s pretty sure no woman ever thought well of a guy who jumped into some bushes to hide.

He nods to her, gives her a smile that’s a little too cheerful, a little too wide, and puts on a little more speed. Just a little. Only a little. There are some trees lining the path up ahead, if he can just get past them, he can go run on the Mall instead. The guy that’s fun to mess with doesn’t make him feel so self-conscious.

He can dodge bullet in a battle, but unexpected bird droppings are another matter. He stops abruptly and tries to brush it off his shirt. And oh, God. There’s something in his hair.

Kate slows to a stop several feet away, her lips twitching, and Steve wishes he could sink into the ground and let the fires of hell consume him. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Why isn’t it happening? Come on, God. Hellfire. Now.

“You must have scared them,” she says.

He can’t decide if he wants to try and get the bird crap out of his hair or just hide it. “They got me back for that.”

She stops trying to suppress her smile. “You know, it Italy, that means good luck.”

“Really.” His tone is flat.

She nods. “Saw it in a movie once.”

“Yeah? Which one? I can learn more about how lucky I am.”

“Don’t remember. But, uh, good luck, Steve.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m due.” They stand awkwardly for several seconds, and Kate slowly gets moving again, sweat causing her shirt to stick to her skin.

“I’m glad you didn’t get any in your mouth,” she says as she passes him.

He makes a face. He supposes he should be glad for small favors. He lets her get farther away and trudges off. This time, he doesn’t try to show off.

Later that day, there’s a knock at his door. When he opens it, he can hear Kate heading downstairs, and there’s a bag on the floor. Opening it, he finds a microwavable turkey pot pie and a smaller bag containing a handful of peeps. The note taped to the bag says, “In case you want revenge. Microwave as much as needed.”

He tries it.

He almost doesn’t mind having to clean his microwave afterward.

* * *

She knows which movie it is; _Under the Tuscan Sun_ sits in her DVD collection back at her parents’ house. Now that she thinks about it, it was probably sold in the estate sale after her parents died. Still, she remembers the bit about bird shit being good luck.

Even though it isn’t good luck by any means. The more time she spends watching Steve, the more she realizes what a horrible assignment it is. Guarding Captain America is easy. Thinking of Steve Rogers objectively is getting... difficult.

At least she has another point of revulsion against the Red Skull - anyone who didn’t like Steve has to be an asshole. She’d known the Skull was an evil bastard, but she’d never understood what it meant for someone not to like Steve, the man who is at once both gawky and muscular, insecure and confident. The man who leaves muffins and microwavable food on her doorstep sometimes when she works late.

She tries to pay him back, but it’s a slippery slope. He’s an assignment. He’s a mark, really. SHIELD is effectively running a con on him, and she’s the person in charge of it.

Still, what is she supposed to do? _Not_ thank him? No. That simply isn’t an option. She’s seen the way his shoulders hang when he’s upset. He never lets his feet drag when he’s Captain America, but when he’s Steve Rogers, SHIELD agent, she doesn’t need a text from Romanoff telling her he had a rough day.

Her mission is to protect him, and that includes his feelings. Doesn’t it?

And besides, they never need to be anything more than friends. Neighbors. People who leave food out for each other with little notes, like the ones he leaves with her muffins saying, “No coffee - didn’t want it to get cold,” complete with a little doodle of a coffee cup.

She knows he’d sketched back in his past life. She’s glad he still does it.

Not that she cares _that_ much, of course. It’s just her job to make sure he’s safe. 

They still talk in the hall sometimes, in a way that she can’t tell if he’s asking her out or not. Her team can’t tell, either, and she’s flattered that they respect her enough now that they keep the teasing to a minimum. She only finds out later that they have a contest for a nickname for her. American Dream, Lady Liberty, and Major America are her favorites, even if the last isn’t the most original. But there are worse things than to be an officer.

* * *

She forgets it’s Thanksgiving. The holiday ceased meaning anything to her after she finished school. She no longer gets a week off to spend with family, and she has no family to spend it with anyway. Except for Peggy, of course, but Peggy never gave a crap about Thanksgiving, either. She had tolerated the vacations of politicians and family members when she’d worked at SHIELD, but Sharon had always gotten the impression that Peggy would rather be saving the world than pretending to give a toss about an American holiday centered around eating and football.

If Sharon had remembered Thanksgiving, she would have taken a slice of pie over to Peggy’s, because even people who don’t like Thanksgiving like pie. But she forgets, trudging home just after sunset from another long day at Project Insight. She’s so busy thinking of how much she misses going on missions that she doesn’t hear Steve’s bike until it’s almost on top of her.

She mentally reviews his schedule and realizes he must have visited Peggy. Which means she can expect another call from Peggy soon. One thing she’s grateful for is that his visits help Peggy feel better; she seems to remember things better when he’s around. She doesn’t want to think of what Peggy would be like if he didn’t visit.

She slows to a stop at the stoop, waiting for him to park his bike. His shoulders are heavy, his expression resigned. She knows the feeling. She’s felt it herself. Feels it right now, actually. “Long day?”

He glances at her, his eyes giving her the once-over of a soldier. “I could say the same to you.” His eyes soften. Sometimes, he is Captain America, sometimes, he is merely the soldier he grew up wanting to be. When his eyes are soft like that, he’s entirely Steve Rogers.

“I look that bad?” she teases.

He shakes his head. “Just like the family took it out of you.”

She looks at him in confusion.

“Thanksgiving dinner,” he clarifies.

Fuck. Thanksgiving. She looks down at her gym clothes and realizes why almost all her team had filed for vacation at the same time, why the gym was so empty at the Trisk. This had happened last year, too, and again, she hadn’t noticed it was Thanksgiving until she turned on the evening news. Of course, Steve had been away on a mission then, and hadn’t managed to catch her unawares looking like a sweaty idiot. “I actually worked a shift earlier. Hit the gym on the way home. Figured it would be empty today.”

“That stinks. You guys don’t get the holiday?”

She shrugs. “We do. I just don’t have much family to take it with, so what’s the point, you know? Might as well be productive rather than mope around my apartment all day, watching people carry balloons and...” Jesus. She used to be such a football fan, and now she can’t think of what teams were scheduled to play today. “Watch football.”

He grins weakly; she isn’t convinced. He looks too worn to feel any degree of pleasure. He waves her up the stairs ahead of him, and they trudge along in tired companionship. “I just took a break from moping, actually.”

“You SHIELD guys don’t get the holiday?” she counters.

He looks taken aback for a second, and then he seems to remember the lie he told her so long ago. Funny, how the two of them, right now, are just a pair of liars. “Not all of us. But my buddy wants Christmas off, so I decided to switch off with him. He works today, I work Christmas.” He looks around. Dupont Circle is eerily quiet. “Not much to do, though. I only know one person here, and she... has other plans today.”

Because the assisted living facility is strict with visiting hours. She understands. When Steve is in town, she can’t go see Peggy without risking blowing her cover by running into him. She’s tried to schedule other times to visit, but the facility director so far refuses to budge, saying that a regular schedule will help slow Peggy’s deterioration, and an irregular schedule will only confuse her.

It’s the only reason Sharon hasn’t tried to break into the facility. That, and SHIELD doesn’t put former directors in normal or mundane facilities. Fury had already warned her in passing that if someone tried to visit Peggy without permission, they would be caught, no question.

“That’s a shame.” She turns and leads the way up the steps, trying to act as if she has no idea what he’s talking about. “I always hated Thanksgiving, to be honest. We always had to go to stuffy dinners at some relative’s I barely knew, and I had to be on my best behavior.”

His eyebrows go up. “That a challenge for you?”

She smiles. “May your Christmas be better, Steve.” She ducks into her apartment before she can talk more about the holiday, how she always wanted Peggy to be there because Peggy had the best stories and never asked her about boyfriends or when she’d be getting married. The two of them had spent plenty of time together when Sharon couldn’t play with the other kids. Peggy had always seemed to think of it as a bit of a rubbish holiday. The older Sharon gets, the more she agrees.

Christmas, now _that,_ Peggy had made time for. She’d always bring some old family recipe for blueberry pie, multiple boxes to make sure she could share with everyone and still get enough herself, and then she’d survey Sharon’s toy haul and say something like, “You’re almost twelve. You should at least have gotten a knife.” Sometimes, Peggy would still be eating her pie while she said it, and Sharon’s heart still melts to think of the crumbs that stuck to her lip while Peggy enthusiastically talked about different forms of martial arts. It had only been the two of them in the living room, and Peggy hadn’t cared about the crumb when Sharon awkwardly pointed it out, had only licked at it and grinned at her. “Can’t leave anything on the plate, can we? Or on the lips, as the case may be.”

Sometimes, she still thinks she can smell the scent of heavy pine and blueberry pie mixing with Peggy’s perfume. She presses her back against the apartment door and takes a deep breath, willing the scent to leave her. The past is past. She knows what’s coming next, or at least she knows he’ll leave a little something outside her door. She heads into the kitchen. This time, she’s prepared. She isn’t the greatest cook, but she has a couple recipes tucked away in her memory.

Mostly. She doesn’t expect an entire blueberry pie on her doorstep.

She knocks on Steve’s door and actually waits for him to answer. “This is awkward,” she greets him. She holds out the blueberry pie she’d made, and he looks at it in surprise.

“Blueberry pie?”

She nods. “I’m sure yours will taste better, though. I don’t cook much.”

He takes it as if it’s something precious, and she tries not to think about how careful he is with it. “I was just testing a recipe. I hope it turned out alright.”

“I’m sure it did.” She stands there for a moment, then quickly takes a step back and picks up the blueberry pie he’d left on her doorstep. “Merry Christmas, Steve.”

“Merry Christmas, Kate.”

And that one word, that fake name, stabs her in the gut. She flashes him a fake grin as cold water runs through her veins, and she turns her back to him and walks into her apartment.

She is an agent of SHIELD. She is Sharon Carter. She is a loyal agent.

And a friend who is not a friend, someone too deceitful to be his friend.

She is an agent of SHIELD. Her mission is to keep him safe. She doesn’t need to be his friend to do that.

But that ache in her gut doesn’t let her fall asleep until shortly before the sun comes up.


	3. Chapter 3

His schedule doesn’t mesh with Kate’s over the next couple of weeks. He wants to thank her for the blueberry pie. He thinks to himself that it’s how he’d wanted _his_ pie to taste, the one he’d taken to Peggy in the assisted living place (not home, never home, despite all the pictures at her bedside). He almost wants to apologize, too, because the pie he’d given Kate had been one of a series in trying to get the recipe right for Peggy’s. She’d told him part of the recipe once, but they’d been interrupted by gunfire, and she’d never finished.

Maybe he should get the recipe from Kate. Ask where she got it.

But he doesn’t see her, doesn’t even hear her when she’s clambering down the stairs to go to work or to do her laundry.

A mission comes soon after that, then another and another. It seems people expect SHIELD to be lax when there’s a holiday coming up, but neither he nor any of the SHIELD agents he knows are big into Christmas, and they want nothing better to do than have an excuse to get away.

He does feel a little pang, though, because Kate doesn’t seem to have much family.

He knows he should feel guiltier about Peggy. He’d loved Peggy for so long before going into the ice, and he still loves her. But she remembers he’s alive less and less, sometimes in the middle of conversations sometimes, and he’d thought he’d known pain when his mom had died, or when Bucky had died, but it seems life just keeps finding ways to beat the crap out of him. It had moved from back alleys and war to a quiet room on a quiet street, where a calendar of events proclaiming bingo and charades hangs in the hall and where lunch is served promptly at eleven each day, where the one person left who remembers who he was before the uniform sometimes can’t remember he’s alive. Residents can go visit the birds at the end of the hall if they want, and even the birds are quiet and peaceful. Steve doesn’t go to visit them; he thinks if he started liking the birds too much, life would kill them, too.

But he still tries to convince himself not to feel too guilty about not visiting her today. Peggy has a large family. A family she loves more deeply than she’d ever loved him, more than she could ever have loved him. Not just her husband, but her own children, and their children after that.

She’d had the life he’d wanted for her. Sure, it had been with somebody else, but he’s happy for her. Happy that she’s lived so long and done so much, that she went from punching someone for disrespect to protecting the world.

So he doesn’t mind finding a mission to take him away at Christmastime. He doesn’t want to run into Peggy’s family. He thinks she’d understand.

He just feels bad that Kate seems to be in the same boat he is. A demanding job and no one to- well. It’s not his business.

He goes on the mission. It takes his mind off things far too briefly, and he gets home to find Kate trudging up the stairs. She walks quietly, except for how her jaw cracks when she yawns.

“Day that bad, huh?”

She startles, and Steve could swear she almost drop-kicks him in the face. Instead, she relaxes and drops her shoulders. “Steve! Jesus, don’t sneak up on people like that!”

“SHIELD agent,” he reminds her, deciding not to point out that she was the one who’d apparently been sneaking past him for weeks now. “Were you about to hit me?” he asks, curious.

“Krav maga,” she says after a beat, and he nods. 

“Can’t be too careful,” he agrees, in what he hopes is a good SHIELD-agent voice. It comes out too much like his Captain America voice. Ugh. He falls into step beside her and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Could I get that blueberry pie recipe from you?”

She nods. “Sure!” She keeps nodding and looks around, and Steve wonders if he’s crowding her and takes a step back, just in case.

“How was your Christmas?” he asks.

She stares at him for a second, and then covers her face with her hands. “That explains the Christmas decorations,” she mutters. “And the Christmas-themed toys where no toys should be.”

His eyes widen. “I hope nobody choked to death on Christmas.”

She lowers her hands to her cheeks and gives him a long look. “No,” she says, and her voice is fond in a way that makes his chest warm. “Nobody choked. To death or otherwise.” She blinks. “I mean, they probably did. But not badly enough that they had to come into the ER. So, probably not to death. Probably. At least, not at _our_ ER. On my shift. Not that I heard.”

He nods and bites his lip. “That’s good.” He looks around the stairwell.

She looks at him for several seconds. He can feel her eyes on him. And then she, too, looks around.

He clears his throat, and she looks at him. “I didn’t mean to make things weird, about the pie.”

She stares at him, confused, then shakes her head. “You didn’t. I’m just- I... I’m not really-” She tries to point between them, but her work bag gets in the way, and she pauses to readjust it. “Sometimes this seems kind of flirtatious,” she says, awkwardly, “and- and even if my schedule weren’t so weird, I think I’d be pretty bad at a relationship right now.”

Steve hopes for the best in people, but he’s seen too much not to discount the worst. “Did something happen? I mean- I mean, you don’t have to tell me, but if there’s any trouble, I’m right across the hall.”

“And you’re a trained SHIELD agent,” she says.

He swallows. There are times when he wants to tell her that he’s more than that. But he doesn’t want to lose what they have. Whatever it is. “Yeah. It’s just- you’re a good person, Kate. If somebody hurt you...”

She makes a face, and Steve kicks himself for saying something that seems to have made the situation even more awkward. “Anybody who hurt me would get a hell of a lesson.” She looks at him for a moment, and then her eyes widen. “Krav maga,” she says quickly. “I mean, because I know krav maga.”

“You do know krav maga,” he concedes. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks she really had been about to kick him in the face.

Which just makes this worse. He likes women who can pack a punch - or kick, as the case may be.

They stand there for another moment, avoiding eye contact but trying to seem as if they aren’t, and then she says, “How was your mission?”

“Good. I... got you something. Just a little thing. Not romantic in any way. Just-”

“Just a neighbor thing?” she asks.

He nods. “Hold on a sec?” He sets his duffel down and starts to slide it open, then remembers that his shield is right on top; it was the last thing he’d throw in. “Actually, I’ll have to get it in a minute. Don’t want to fill the stairwell with the smell of my dirty clothes.” He zips it up again and hefts it on his shoulder.

Her lips curl faintly at the edges. “I’ve smelled worse. Let’s just say that I’ll never see plastic Christmas trees the same way again.”

He blinks at her, opens his mouth, and then stares at her for a moment. “Do I want to know?”

She shakes her head. She’s silent for a moment, but then she says, “I... might have set something aside for you.”

“Nothing romantic, I hope,” he tells her, forcing a smile. “Because us SHIELD agents need our personal space. Never know when we might have to go on a mission.”

“Or go undercover,” she agrees. Her lips part in a soft, slow smile, too, and he finds that he likes that smile. 

He quickly looks away again.

She starts leading the way to their hall, and he climbs up a stair below her.

It’s too quiet, too awkward, and he tries to pick up the conversation. “Yeah.” He thinks about Natasha, how easily she slides in and out of different skins. “Not sure I could do undercover work. Thankfully, I’m not asked to very often.”

“So what do you do at SHIELD, anyway?” She looks back at him and makes a face. “Or am I allowed to ask? Are you going to kill me if I know too much?”

He suppresses the idea of how horrific it would be for him to kill her. Er, anyone in the building. For anyone in the building to get killed or hurt because of him. He forces a grin. “Not on my watch.”

He thinks that her gaze lingers on him for a moment, but then she turns away and he tells himself he’s imagining things.

They reach their hall, and she hesitates beside her door. “Give me a sec?”

He nods. “Meet you back here in T-2 minutes.”

She looks wryly amused, and then she’s gone.

He hurries into his apartment and slings the bag onto his couch, ripping the zipper down so hard it comes undone at the end of the line. He ignores it - it isn’t the first he’s ruined - and grabs the plastic shopping bag he’d crammed inside before Natasha could comment on it. He stops, pulls the items out, looks around for something that might pass for wrapping, and grabs the throw from the back of the couch.

She’s already in the hall, and she hurriedly hides something behind her back and smiles. It’s a nervous, shy smile, and he tries to ignore how his heart thumps when he see it.

He clears his throat and presents her with the throw. “I didn’t have time to wrap it,” he apologizes.

“I didn’t have time to wrap yours, either.” She holds out a record, and she awkwardly takes the throw from his hands so he can take the record.

He helps her with one hand, pawing away the excess blanket, until the coffee mug is revealed.

She grins at it. “I’m a nurse,” she intones. “What’s your superpower?” Her grin widens into a smile, and he finally lets himself look down at her gift.

“There’s more. Somebody in my unit had to go to the hospital, so I was in the gift shop a lot. Got all my shopping done, though.” He raises her gift to get a better look and looks at the Duke Ellington cover. He holds it up to her, as if she hasn’t already seen it. As if he hadn’t first heard the Duke over the radio in Brooklyn over seventy years ago. “Really?”

“Hey, if the whole floor gets to hear the music you play, then yes. Really.”

He cheeks color. “Sorry. I’ll turn it down.”

“Don’t you dare. That,” she says, pointing at the record, “is what I believe the kids refer to as ‘the shit.'”

“‘The shit,'” he repeats, the corners of his lips tilting upward.

“And you don’t want to mess with me, mister.” She holds up the pin he’d gotten her as if he hasn’t already seen it. _Don’t mess with me,_ it reads. _I get paid to stab people._ “I love it, by the way. This is usually my mentality at work, so it’s great.”

He smiles. “Glad I could help warn people in advance, then.”

“Sure, Steve. Ruin the element of surprise.” Her eyes are dancing, and he wonders if they would still dance if he were still the skinny kid from Brooklyn. But he doesn’t think Sharon is the sort to judge a person’s worth based on his looks. Their looks, he means. She’s possibly the second woman he can say that about. She holds up the pin and mug. “Uh. Thank you, though.”

He nods. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Steve.”

Another shy look, and then she’s slid into her apartment. He stands there, looking after her, until he realizes that enough time has gone by to make it weird. He rouses himself and lets himself into his own apartment. He glances at the record player for a moment, then the door, and then grins to himself as he sets the record to play just loud enough to be heard across the hall.


	4. Chapter 4

Sharon leans against the door and looks at the mug and the pin. She shouldn’t like them as much as she does, she thinks. But she does.

And there’s no crime in that, she tells herself. She tells herself that until she almost believes it.

She freezes. Is that Duke Ellington? She turns back to her door, hesitates, and then cracks the door open the tiniest bit. Yes, that’s Duke Ellington. She smiles to herself, realizes she’s doing it, and then hurries to give the coffee mug a quick rinse so she can use it. Not on the job, of course, but this is hot cocoa weather, and the mug would probably be perfect for hot cocoa.

Right, she thinks as she sets the mug aside to dry. That’s what it is.

Fixing the pin to the inside of her work jacket is harder to rationalize. In the end, she elects to wait until the morning to come up with an excuse, but the next morning, all she thinks is that she likes that goddamn pin. _I get paid to stab people._

Yeah. She likes the pin.

The ribbing she gets from her team is ferocious. The team erases surveillance footage every twelve hours, but it seems everyone has heard about the gifts nonetheless. She doesn’t know who on the surveillance team got the word out, but on Monday morning, every single person on the team is carrying a “Nurse” coffee mug and giving her knowing glances. They tell her “Merry Christmas,” with a bit more weight than they’d said before.

But she doesn’t mind. She writes her report, includes the discussion in the hall, and she knows when Fury’s read it because she comes home to find him in her apartment.

“Didn’t know you had a key, sir.”

“I’m paying for the apartment. Of course I have a key.” He eyes her. He might have lost an eye on a mission, but anyone who doesn’t think he doesn’t see as much as other people, if not more, is an idiot. “You going to date Rogers?”

She shakes her head. “No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because-” And she pauses. She’s always taken it for granted that she would never date him. She had never put it into words, not even in her own mind. “Because it would be wrong.”

He raises an eyebrow at her.

She casts about for how best to explain what she means. “Protecting him is one thing. Violating his trust to protect him is one thing. Violating his trust to enter into a romantic- a romantic _liaison_ , is another. That could hurt him. If he discovers the truth, and we can’t assume he won’t notice something eventually, he won’t forgive us. Which will make it harder for SHIELD to work with him. _And_ it goes against the mission to protect him.”

Fury holds his hands behind his back. She wonders if he’s ever practiced that stance in the mirror. “Do you want to tell him who you are?”

She watches him suspiciously. “It would go over better than him finding out the hard way,” she says slowly. “If we wait too long, he may not forgive us. Either of us.”

Fury holds his hands together, fingertips touching. “Do you think he has reason to suspect?”

Mentally, she reviews Steve’s behavior. But she also knows she doesn’t have to. Steve would never have... talked to her like that in the hall if he’d known he were under surveillance of any kind. “No, sir.”

“And you won’t date him in order to get closer to him, find out more information.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “No, sir. We know all we need to in order to keep him safe. Our bases are covered enough.” Let the man live a little. Don’t betray him in a way he won’t be able to come back from, she adds silently.

Fury nods, stands up, his long coat slipping into place in a whisper. “And if you miss something?”

“We won’t.” Her voice is firm. Her team is excellent. They work well together. They’re good at what they do. None of them need to date Rogers to keep him safe. “We don’t have to betray his feelings to keep him safe, sir.”

He nods again, a single, terse movement. “Good. Shows integrity. That’s good.”

It’s only then that she remembers that as much as Fury trusts her, she’s still a young agent. One who has to be tested.

“But,” Fury continues, “you won’t always get to have that. Integrity. If I were you, I’d consider what you’re willing to give up, Agent.” She glares at him, but his eyes soften. “Advice from someone who hasn’t always considered it.” He scratches at the corner of his eyepatch. “Integrity can get people killed.”

She can hear a faint echo in her mind, _and where you can’t compromise..._

She gives Fury a nod that matches his own; if he suspects she’s partly mocking him, he doesn’t mention it. “I’ll consider it,” she promises.

In hell.

* * *

They have two new part-time employees at the mom and pop shop around the corner. She doesn’t notice at first, but then the store is cleaner and their selection expands and the owners have more energy.

“A donor,” Mrs. Rosenwald tells her excitedly when she asks. “He said he remembered our shop from when he was a child, loves that it’s still here, and wanted to thank us for not leaving the neighborhood.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t all thank you like he did,” Sharon says, meaning it.

Mrs. Rosenwald waves a hand at her, winks, a drops a wrapped pastry into Sharon’s bag. “Pass it on.” She smiles brightly, so happily, that Sharon’s insides ache a little because she has just realized how worn down Mr. and Mrs. Rosenwald have been for years, how hard they’ve struggled to keep their shop, and how relieved they are that they don’t have to worry about whether their shop and livelihood will survive anymore.

It doesn’t take a genius to know Rogers got his backpay sorted out.

* * *

The Rosenwalds aren’t the only people Steve gives money to. He gives the bulk of it to the VA - they need more help than he ever will, and he doesn’t like that while he was sleeping, the people at the VA were risking life and limb and watching the funding to help them get slashed. Some money goes to the children’s hospital. Smaller bits go to places around the neighborhood, to family-owned cafes and hole-in-the-wall shops.

The change doesn’t happen overnight, but he smiles to himself when the owners at the coffee shop talk excitedly to their favorite customers about their plans to fix their equipment. He hides his smile by looking down at his cup of coffee. He still hates it in this new world, but he’s glad that he can do some good.

Natasha slides into the seat across from him. “You need to stop looking at your coffee like that,” she admonishes him. “People will think you’re dating it.”

He holds it close to his chest, the mug hidden by his hands. It still surprises him sometimes, how large his hands are. “Don’t talk about my cup of coffee like she’s just a thing.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’ve got to get you a girlfriend.”

He’s shaking his head before she’s even talking. “I don’t think so.”

She smirks. “We’ll see. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I can be... effective.”

He knows there’s no point in arguing with her. Any serious objections will just make her try harder. So as much as he wants to say that he can’t date anyone, that he doesn’t even belong here, who could be happy with him, would even want to try, instead he just says, “You here about a mission?”

Natasha nods. “Let’s go. I’ll brief you on the way. And bring your girlfriend,” she says, eyeing his cup. “I want to make sure she treats you right.”

* * *

Natasha knows about the nurse across the hall, because of course she does. She knows a lot of women in his apartment building. She also knows a lot of women at SHIELD.

He’s never been happier that he doesn’t keep a journal for writing down his feelings; he’s almost certain she’d read it.

He signs up for every mission he can get, but not everything requires STRIKE Team Delta. Not everything requires the Avengers. And for either one, Natasha would be there.

He tells himself that this is good practice for avoiding intrusive questions from reporters. 

He tells himself that Natasha will have to give up eventually.

He knows he’s wrong.

* * *

This time, she doesn’t hear him coming up the stairs. She almost bumps into him nose-first when she turns around, and only him jumping back prevents her embarrassment.

Well, _more_ embarrassment.

“Sorry! Sorry,” she proclaims, her heart racing. She hadn’t heard him. She’d had no idea he was on his way up.

She’s never noticed before how accustomed she’s become to hearing his motorcycle outside warning her, or his steps on the stairs.

“My fault,” he says quickly. “I’m dodging a friend of mine.”

She blinks at him. “Oh.” She looks around, doesn’t see any friend. “What?”

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He looks flustered. “My friend’s trying to set me up with someone for Valentine’s Day. I’ve got three days left, then I’m in the clear.”

Oh, God. Valentine’s Day. That would explain why so many people on her team asked for the evening off. And the next morning. She sighs. She needs to make sure they tell her _why_ they’re asking for time off.

“I’d offer to let you hide out in my place, if you think he’s here.” He, even though she’s almost certain he’s talking about Natasha. “But I haven’t cleaned in weeks and I’m not sure what diseases I might have brought home.” Though she knows exactly where she left her case files - in plain sight on the coffee table. She also knows that she has so little furniture that her apartment will never look messy; it barely looks like someone lives there.

“Not necessary.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, and for a moment, one fleeting moment, she wants to ask whom he helped out besides the Rosenwalds. She clamps down on it. “But if you see a redhead woman wandering the halls looking for my place, could you tell her that I died of old age in my sleep and will come back to haunt her later? She’ll understand.”

Sharon blinks. For just a moment, she wonders what it would be like to work with Steve closely enough that they have inside jokes. She dismisses the thought, just as she’s dismissed so many others. Wayward thoughts have become regular occurrences lately, and she hates it. Nothing can happen. Nothing _will_ happen. She won’t allow it.

So all she says is “Will do,” and flashes him a tight smile before hurrying to the Rosenwalds’ shop.


	5. Chapter 5

He survives Valentine’s Day. It’s especially impressive given how many people were shooting at him; Rollins had caught a bullet, and when Steve walks home on February 15, he stares at the red and pink hearts in the windows as he passes by. The sense of war abroad and peace at home shouldn’t surprise him anymore, and yet there’s always a weird discombobulation about it.

There’s a stack of candy, clearance stickers still attached, outside his door with a note. “Happy Feb 15, the only candy-related holiday in Feb that matters.”

He looks across the hall, with the closed door and its brass 3, then picks up the candy and takes it inside.

After the day before, it still feels weird to sit around his apartment, writing up his report and eating Valentine’s Day candy, but he still feels better by the end of it - despite the clearance stickers that are clearly meant to say “Don’t read into this. This is just a nice thing I thought to do. There’s nothing romantic here.”

But at the end of the day, he survives February 15, too.

* * *

Agents are goddamn children. It shouldn’t surprise her. She’s known agents since she was a child. Barton in particular has always been good at playing games.

She attributes it all to Insight. After all, nothing is happening with Steve’s detail. One teenage girl had gotten dangerously close to finding his address somehow, with the team thinking at first that it was an enemy agent honing in on his location. They actually laughed when they realized what was going on, and Sharon had rerouted her with a false trail and told Fury to consider hiring her.

Insight, on the other hand, is a challenge. Launch is slated for a month, and everything has to be perfect. The Insight room is quiet for the most part, the agents working feverishly to make sure everything is done in time. Sharon knows that someone, somewhere, said about Insight, “Oh, that won’t launch until 2014, we don’t have to rush on these details,” and had thereafter taken their sweet time making sure everything got done until the deadline was right around the corner. She spends more and more time working until three in the morning and cursing their souls.

But the thing about high-pressure situations is that people feel the need to defuse them by being childish. Which is why, on March 17, almost everyone in the room is wearing green.

Except for Sharon, because she’s been busy, damn it.

After the seventh person pinches her, she gives up and exclaims, “Oh, fuck _all_ of you!”

And then someone shouts that Rogers is on his way and Sharon has to duck into a closet to hide.

He isn’t anywhere nearby, of course. But her team enjoys scaring her into the closet anyway.

* * *

Steve avoids the Avengers on April 1st. He isn’t worried about most of them, but Tony is another matter. Tony is... celebratory, for lack of a better word, and wants to include everyone, and Steve has found himself invited to a party on the first night in April. He has suspicions. He stays home.

Which is how he happens to find Kate trudging up the stairs, half asleep and covered in silly string.

“You look like you had an interesting night,” he quips, before realizing that isn’t a quip and kicking himself.

She stops and stairs up at him, grasping the railing. She looks exhausted.

“Long day at work?” he asks.

She groans and laboriously climbs up to the landing. “You have no idea.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re dripping silly string behind you. I think everyone in the building has an idea.”

She looks behind herself, at the small pieces of silly string that have detached and left a trail behind her, and sighs. “Oh. Uh, yeah. My- my friends, that I work with. They thought it would be funny to... make me think my boss was around? To make me work. On my day off. That I have coming up. So... they shouted that he was coming. And I might have hidden in a supply closet, and... they might have done this to me when I came out. Of the closet.” She looks down at herself. “I might kill them all tomorrow.”

“Being a nurse is more fun than I thought.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s not what they’re going to think tomorrow.”

He grins. “Uh... thanks for the candy, by the way. They-” They’d made his day better. “They were pretty good.”

She shrugs and grins at him. “Yeah, well. Nothing tastes better than candy the day it goes on sale.”

He could swear her eyes linger on him, and part of him wonders if she’s over her ex yet, if he should at least ask.

Instead, he clears his throat. “Well. Who am I to question someone who obviously knows her stuff?”

She huffs what might be a tired laugh, and a piece of silly string slips from her her hair onto her sleeve. She makes a face. “I’d better go get cleaned up,” she says. She looks toward the stairwell. “And then clean that up before the super finds out. I think it’s pretty obvious who made the mess.” She turns to him, and once again it feels like they stand there, staring at each other, for a little too long. “Good night, Steve.”

“Good night, Kate.”

She blinks, and something in her eyes shuts off. She nods, slips inside her apartment without looking at him again, and he looks at the trail of silly string disappearing down the stairs.

He ducks into his apartment and comes out a moment later with a plastic bag and a damp towel. She was too tired to have to clean it up herself, he reasons. Besides, he can have it done in a fraction of the time.

* * *

She really is starting to like him too much for her own good. She goes through the motions of not caring, but she can never seem to look away in time. He just looks so _earnest._

She wants him to be happy.

But she’d known when she’d first joined SHIELD that she might have to sacrifice her happiness for the sake of keeping others safe. It went with the territory. And her duty is to keep him safe, not to be someone she isn’t in order to make him happy, not to lie to him and date him to make him happy. It would only hurt him more in the end.

Duty over love, she tells herself on her way home. 

Duty over _like,_ she mentally corrects herself.

Goddamn it.

She isn’t particularly surprised to find Fury in her apartment again, though she doesn’t register that it’s him until her gun is trained on him.

He holds up a hand. “Easy, Agent. I’ve had a long day, and if you shoot me, you have no _idea_ how pissed off I’m going to be.”

She immediately puts her gun away and rushes to his side. “Shit, Nick,” she exclaims, forgetting formality. “You look like hell!”

He waves her off. “People tried to kill me earlier. I’ve got to talk to Rogers on the sly. Need you to warn him without tipping him off that I’m in there so he doesn’t take my damn head off with that shield of his.”

She nods but is busy elsewhere, pulling the first aid kit out from underneath the couch cushions.

He forces himself to his feet. “I’m fine, Sharon. Rogers is due back from his mission any minute. Get me in there.”

In the end, she has to help him to a chair, just out of sight of a window. She feels odd being in Steve’s apartment, seeing how little has changed since she last arranged the listening devices around the place. She feels like it’s yet another violation.

 _This is your job,_ she tells herself. _Do your damn job._

Fury coughs and wipes his mouth, and she glares at him. 

“You should-”

He grabs her wrist to stop her. Shows her a message on his phone. _Trust no one._

She stares at it, bites her lip. The only people listening in are her team. They would never betray Steve. Never betray Fury.

But when he’s about to cough again, she quickly turns on the record player, turns the volume up.

“Agent 13?” a voice asks in her comm. “We’re getting noise from Rogers’ apartment, but we don’t have him as back yet.”

“It’s me. I’m testing the bugs. Noticed a couple had weak signals when I went over the report.”

Fury nods and sinks in his chair, and she wishes he would let her get the first aid kit.

“Better hurry up, ma’am. He just pulled up.”

“Find the faulty bug,” she orders, trying to sound urgent. She doesn’t have to try very hard. Fury looks like shit, and she doesn’t want to leave him alone until she absolutely has to.

In the end, she barely manages to get to her apartment in time, pulling out a laundry basket that isn’t even full yet, drops in her gun and covers it with a shirt, and is just about to leave the room when her phone goes off.

Never let it be said that Carters don’t have immaculate timing.

She only answers the phone because it’s Aunt Peggy, and she will never ignore a call from Aunt Peggy. She whispers that she can’t talk right now but is it an emergency, because if it is, Sharon will make it work, and Peggy says that she understands and will call back later just as Sharon gets the call over the comm in her ear that Rogers is headed up.

She tucks the laundry basket under her arm, juggling the phone awkwardly as she tries to close the door behind her. She sees a glimpse of Rogers coming up the stairs. What can she tell him about Fury? What can she infer? What hints can she drop?

She turns, and he gives her a shy smile and a nod, and she wishes, wishes, wishes, that their lives were different and he could look at her like that without her maintaining this charade.

“I gotta go, though,” she says into the phone, trying not to talk faster than normal. “Okay. Bye.” She takes a breath and turns to face Rogers. How to let him know Fury is inside his apartment without tipping off her team... “My aunt,” she explains quickly as Rogers turns to face her. She’s really stalling as she tries to think of something that won’t rouse his suspicions. “She’s kind of an insomniac.” She drops the phone in the laundry basket.

He looks at the basket of laundry under her arm. “Hey, if you want, you’re welcome to use my machine. Might be cheaper than the one in the basement.”

Why, oh why, does he have to smile like that at her? She swallows and tries to match his banter. How to alert him to Fury? How to alert him... “Oh, yeah? What’s it cost?” She certainly can’t go into his apartment - not when Fury’s there. Or could she? No, that would blow her cover.

His smile quickly fades as his nervousness returns. Why, oh why, does he have to be so- No. She can’t think of that right now. No matter how much it warms her inside. “A cup of coffee?” he asks. There’s more in his voice than just the question. She can hear the fear, the worry, and yet, underneath it all, the hope.

Because they had agreed. No romance. Even though they keep getting closer and closer. Still, now that it’s possible, now that her cover can’t continue forever, Sharon feels cold. She can’t do that to him. She can’t. She can’t agree to go out with him after lying to him for so long. She smiles softly and ducks her head. 

This, Fury, and a call to return to Peggy. When it rained, it looked like a scene from _Twister._ “Thank you. But.” Oh, God. The gun in her basket. “Um.” Crap. _Think._ “I already have a load in downstairs.” Is that enough to deter him? He’s so kind, and Fury wants to talk to him alone... “And you really don’t want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished a rotation in the infectious disease ward, so...” Wait. Hadn’t she just dropped her phone in the basket?

_Shit._

Rogers, either out of kindness or because he hadn’t noticed or thought about it yet, doesn’t point out that her phone might now have the plague. He holds up his hands. “Ah, well. I’ll keep my distance.”

Her insides melt a little more. He’s so good at that, at respecting the boundaries she set up, at being _good._ And she’s turned him down. And might have hurt him. Damn it, there are times she hates her job. “Hopefully not too far,” she says quietly, almost remembering too late to keep her tone light and playful. She turns, and then pauses. Fury is still inside, waiting, and she doesn’t want Rogers to brain him with the shield before recognizing him. She hears a strain of music and quickly turns back. “And I think you left your stereo on.” In retrospect, it’s so simple to tip him off that something isn’t right. Not even her team will suspect something - they knew she’d left it on and likely just thought she was covering her own ass.

That done, she goes down the stairs. Out of sight, she leans her head against the wall and takes a series of deep breaths. What is she even doing? Fury is injured in Rogers’ apartment, and she’d flirted with him. Rogers, not Fury. She knows better than to truly flirt with Rogers, but she had almost blown it. She hated to think about it, but maybe she should talk to Fury about being reassigned...

God, and she’d hung up on Peggy. She’ll have to make it up to Peggy soon and make it right.

“Shots fired, shots fired.”

She digs the walkie-talkie out of the laundry basket and speaks as she drops the basket to run upstairs again. “This is team leader. Repeat that.”

“Shots fired in Rogers’ apartment. I repeat, shots fired in Rogers’ apartment.”

Her mind reels. Not knowing what she’ll find on the other side of the door, Sharon drops the walkie into her pocket and kicks the door open, her gun drawn. No point in pretending she’s still a nurse - nurses were unlikely to pack an FNP-45 Tactical. And Sharon needs to assure him she’s an ally - a capable ally who could help him - if things had gone south.

“Captain Rogers?” she calls, clearing the apartment and making her way to where she’d left Fury. She sees Rogers first and keeps her gun steady and pointed away from him. “Captain. I’m Agent 13 of SHIELD Special Service.”

He stares at her as if he’s never seen her before. She tries to concentrate on the mission as the disbelief and confusion in his features are replaced by pain. “Kate?”

She comes closer. “I was assigned to protect you.”

“On whose order,” he demands, the pain quickly overtaken by anger. She can’t blame him. Protected but betrayed... _This_ is why she’d wanted to tell him the truth.

Her eyes finally find Fury in the dim light, lying on the floor and gasping for breath. She stares, shaken to her core. Of all the people she’d expected to fall, Fury had never been one of them. She forces her throat to work again. “His.” She drops to the floor beside Fury and digs out the walkie. “Foxtrot is down. He’s unresponsive. I need EMTs.”

“Do we have a twenty on the shooter?”

“Tell him I’m in pursuit,” Rogers says.

By the time Sharon looks up, he’s gone. She relays the message to her team as she tries to stop Fury’s blood loss. “When you wake up,” she mutters darkly, “we’re going to have a long, long talk.”


	6. Chapter 6

She debriefs Pierce as best she can, leaving back a healthy amount because he isn’t her boss, not yet. Fury might still wake up. He’d still be alive when they took him away. In the meantime, she answers to Fury, not Pierce.

It’s when she sees Rogers walking down the hallway that she knows that Pierce arranged for the two of them to be in the hall at the same time. Trying to catch them in a lie? Trying to throw one or both of them off? What? What is Pierce up to?

She braces herself as she walks, tries to feel as confident as she used to. They aren’t pretending anymore. It’s all out in the open now. Maybe they can start anew, and she can explain... She gives him a friendly nod, feeling awkward and uneasy. “Captain.”

He doesn’t even look at her. “Neighbor.”

Right. She’d forgotten what an asshole he was.

* * *

Enough time passes that there is an empty grave beneath his feet, and the person who’s supposed to be in it is walking away.

“You should call that nurse,” Natasha says.

Steve feels a glimmer of relief that he quickly hides. He’d hoped she - Kate - Agent 13 - had survived. He’s still angry that she - that _SHIELD_ \- had deceived him, but she didn’t deserve to die. And he suspects that Fury would have died without her. “She’s not a nurse.”

“And you’re not a SHIELD agent.” Natasha shrugs and eyes him levelly, and he remembers how she’d tried to set him up with the nurse across the hall before. She’d known all along. She must have known.

“What was her name again?” Because if Natasha knows her name, then she really _had_ known.

“Sharon,” Natasha says, confirming his suspicions. And then she adds, “She’s nice.”

Steve nods. He knows that Natasha doesn’t compliment many people, that it speaks highly of the not-nurse across the hall, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to call her. Not yet.

* * *

Drawing her is another matter. The portraits are harsh at first, but every time he tries to capture the harshness in her eyes that he wants to see there, he has to admit his sketches are lies. She had never looked at him harshly; she had looked at him with pity and concern and... maybe happiness. When he sketches her like that, her eyes soft and sparkling, she looks more like Kate. Sharon. Whoever she is.

Whoever she is, she has kind, caring eyes.

“You keep sketching that girl, I’m gonna start asking Nat about her,” Sam says over his shoulder.

Steve snaps his sketchbook shut. “She’s nobody.”

Sam makes a face of disbelief. “Uh-huh.”

* * *

Sharon tries to forget him. She throws herself into work, like she always does when she’s upset about something. She lands on her feet at the CIA, where no one has love nor much respect for SHIELD. To everyone’s surprise, she starts working her way up the ranks. When the CIA joins a global anti-terrorism initiative, they put Sharon on the team. She leaves thoughts of him behind her and makes sure Peggy has the best possible care whenever she has to go out of town.

She’s finally moving forward. To where, she doesn’t know. But she’s finally managing to leave her past, with its heartbreak and betrayals, in the past. She wants to think that’s a good thing. She wants to have a future. If not a future of hope, then of doing work that matters.

And then she gets the phone call.

* * *

The casket is disturbingly light. Sure, Steve iss stronger than most people, and others help carry it, but he still expects that someone of Peggy’s consequence and accomplishments would be heavier.

He takes his seat, his head lowered. He’s been called a man out of time before, and he’s often felt that way, but without Peggy, without Bucky, what link to his past does he have anymore? Is he fated to outlive everyone he’s ever loved? He feels listless, unmoored.

Peggy is dead. Bucky is hiding from him. Steve has a future, but what good is it without his past?

Sam bumps his arm, and Steve looks to find what he’s seen, only to find Kate. No, Sharon.

Sharon, Peggy’s _niece?_

* * *

She can’t help but look at him before she begins her eulogy. Thoughts cross her mind in a blink, tumbling one over another. She’d known he would be here - that he wouldn’t be able to stay away - but it’s something else to actually see him in person. She’d last seen him in person years ago, and she tells herself, lies to herself, really, that she’s just looking at him to make sure he’s doing well. He’d saved the world so many times, and now the world is joining together against the Avengers, against him.

He looks, though, much as she’d expected him to look. Tired, and sad, burdened but unbroken.

He’s gotten a haircut, too. It looks good.

She takes a breath and steadies herself. Enough about him. She has a mission.

And then, she blows her cover, reveals her name and relationship to the great Peggy Carter, to everyone in the church and beyond to pay homage to her great-aunt. Gone is the Agent 13 alias, gone is the anonymity, gone is the past.

* * *

With a little prompting from Sam, he talks to her at the wake. She isn’t Kate. Steve’s known that for years at this point, but in his mind, he still thinks she would act like Kate, would talk like Kate, flirt like Kate.

She doesn’t. She isn’t as soft as Kate - or maybe the edges hadn’t existed until the Triskellion fell. She still doesn’t treat him like Captain America, though, and she walks that fine, fine line between professional and awkward friend so well that he keeps watching her for some sign of her real thoughts, only to realize that she’s looking back at him as if doing the same. All he really gets out of the conversation is permission to call her Sharon and give her permission to call him Steve in exchange. He offers to walk her back to the hotel, partly to get to know her as Sharon, partly to catch up, partly to figure out what that look in her eyes is.

He can’t help but wonder at her being related to Peggy. Even having someone who understands what Peggy meant to him, what she meant to the world, gives him something to hold onto, gives him hope that his past and everything he knows isn’t entirely gone, that its legacy, at least, lives on. Better yet, it gives him hope for the future. 

Very, very cautious hope, but hope nonetheless.

But just as he starts daring himself to kiss her, Sam appears and things go to hell.

* * *

Things go to hell, and they go to hell so fast her head spins. Bucky Barnes, implicated in a crime he has no reason to commit. A massive international manhunt with the news following every step of the way, hungry for any scrap of information. Nothing about it feels right. Bucky Barnes had never been a showboat; he’d existed for seventy years, killed them as the Winter Soldier, without anyone being the wiser. Why, after years of hiding, would he suddenly resurface to kill people and be so clumsy as to get caught on security cameras? Is someone controlling him? And if that’s the case, he certainly doesn’t deserve a kill-on-sight order. Even if he _isn’t_ being controlled, she isn’t sure he deserves that - and he definitely doesn’t deserve it without a trial, or without them understanding _why_ he allegedly did it.

At SHIELD, she had questioned her superiors. After SHIELD fell, she learned the value of doing more. She follows Rogers- Steve- and Wilson into a pub and slips the file on Barnes’ location to Steve as she fights not to look at him. 

When she walks away, she thinks it’s her last time talking to him. 

And then the call comes that Barnes, Rogers, Wilson, and King T’Challa had all been arrested. They’re on the way to JCTC, and Sharon is appointed to greet them with Ross. Honestly. How does she always forget what an _asshole_ Rogers is? Now the task force knows they have a mole, and she knows she’s been appointed to greet Rogers - _Steve_ \- so they can see if she implicates herself in some way. More likely, he’ll implicate her somehow. God, she’d forgotten what an asshole he is.

When they bring Barnes in, lost, tense, and apprehensive in the bulletproof transport, Sharon knows in her marrow that he’s innocent. So when she’s in the briefing room with Steve and Wilson, she makes sure no one is watching and turns the feed to Barnes’ interview. She can’t talk freely to Steve - neither of them can - but she meets his eyes and gives a nod. She can’t do much, not right now, but she can at least let Steve see and hear his friend.

And when they talk about why Barnes would be here, why he’s been brought to the Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre in a nice, bullet-proof box, and realize he’s been brought there only to be triggered and set loose as the Winter Soldier, they work it out together, and Sharon wishes again that she and Fury had come clean to him sooner. Maybe, working with him as she now is, they could have realized something wasn’t right sooner.

He and Wilson leave to stop Barnes, and Sharon joins Romanoff and Stark to cut him off from another direction.

She ends up in the splinters of a table, her heart still pounding after taking on the Winter Soldier, gasping for breath and struggling to get up again as the sound of fighting moves farther away.

Romanoff nods to her from across the hall. “You okay?”

“Worse for wear, but yeah. Dandy. You?”

Romanoff rolls her shoulder and nods again.

“Sure,” Stark whines. “Nobody ask how I’m doing.”

* * *

It isn’t until Bucky’s arm is in a vise before Steve heaves a sigh. As he waits for Sam to arrive, Sam, who kept following him no matter what, he sits down heavily and considers everything he’s lost. Yet again, just as things looked like he could settle down and make a life for himself, he had to go and screw it up.

He tries not to think about Sharon, how much she had helped him, how much she had helped Bucky, and he hopes Sam and Bucky didn’t notice how quickly he gets his phone out to call her about their gear.

* * *

It’s a bad month for phone calls, she thinks to herself as she parks under the overpass. She holds onto the steering wheel, her eyes constantly checking her surroundings as she waits. She’s done it. She’s committed treason. Was it the right thing? She thinks so. Rogers - _Steve_ \- has a mission he needs his gear for, and...

And she trusts him. It isn’t just that he’s Captain America and she’s a Carter, it’s that she knows that no matter how broken he is, no matter how worn down, he will always get up to help others, to protect them as best he can.

With that in mind, how can she say no?

She exhales in relief when she sees the ancient bug roll up and tries not to grin at how oversized Steve looks in the tiny car. “Not sure you understand the concept of a getaway car,” she greets him as she turns off the engine and gets out of her rental.

He glances at it. “It’s low profile.”

She barely keeps from rolling her eyes. It sounds like he’s already made the same excuse to others, likely Wilson and Barnes. “Good,” she says dryly. “Because this stuff tends to draw a crowd.” She opens the boot to reveal his shield, Sam’s equipment, and a bag of clothes for Barnes. She’s included a first-aid kit and a bag of food - he makes stupid and self-destructive decisions with little planning, and she’s sure the three men don’t have food with them and could use it.

“I owe you again.” He glances at her, and part of her wishes he would stop looking at her like that, and part of her wished he never would.

“Keeping a list,” she says, keeping her voice light. She can’t stop looking at him. Is this the last time they’ll see each other? Oh, God. And his friends are watching. She glances again at the car, seeing Wilson in the front seat and- oh. Barnes in the back. He seems like he’s himself again - that’s something. At least, he isn’t throwing Wilson onto a table. “You know, he kind of tried to kill me,” she teases.

“Sorry.” Steve ducks his head down. “I’ll put it on the list, too.” He lifts his eyes, and she wishes things had been different, wishes she had been open with him years ago. “They’re going to come looking for you.”

Let them, she almost says. At least she’s thrown her life away making her own decisions this time, unlike when Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, when she’d never had the choice and had only been able to pick herself up in the aftermath.

Instead, she only says, “I know,” and tries to look at him a little longer. There’s no telling when she’ll see him again, no telling when she’ll get the chance. And if this month has taught her anything, it’s that there’s no point in trying to get him out of her head.

“Thank you, Sharon.”

She nods, looks into his eyes for longer. And- wait. How long have they been looking at each other like this?

Just then, he leans forward, and almost before she knows it, she’s kissing him, and he’s kissing her, and his hands are on her hips and her hands are on his chest and on the back of his neck and burying themselves in his hair.

Even when they part, they stay close, their foreheads touching, her breath mingling with his. “That was...” Her heart pounds. Her hands are still on his shoulder and chest and she can’t think of words as well as she had ten minutes ago.

“Late,” he admits, embarrassed.

She thinks of the years that have passed since he’d come out of the ice, since he’d moved into that four-story walk-up on Dupont. “Damn right.”

She’s rewarded by his warm breath against her lips as he huffs a laugh, and her heart soars as she tries to think of the last time she’s seen him smile, heard him laugh. She pulls away to get a better look and beams up at him. Slowly, she remembers that they’ve met at the overpass because he has a mission to go on, and she has to go on the run. She turns away from his car and the people watching from inside, turns away from Steve, and takes a breath. She gives him another smile. “I should go.”

Steeling herself, she forces her feet to walk around him. She has to go on the run now, disappear so thoroughly that no intelligence agency can find her.

As she pulls away, watching him walk back to his car in the rearview mirror, she smiles to herself again. At least this time, she has hope.

* * *

“We’re leaving her here?” Bucky asks. “I thought you said we needed all the help we could get. And she can hold her own. Trust me.”

“She just committed treason for us, Buck. This goes south... She doesn’t deserve that.”

“Ooooooooh,” Sam sings. “Cap likes a giiiiiiiiiirl.”

“You,” Steve says firmly, “can get arrested.”

Sam snorts. “Just make sure you bust me out.”

Steve grins to himself. “Sure thing.”

He watches Sharon’s car disappear from sight. For the first time in years, he feels like he has a future. He’ll just save the world this one, last time, and then he’ll be able to live his own life. And this time, he won’t be as alone as he always feared he would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, how did you guys think it was going to end?
> 
> Fingers crossed for a sequel! Come on, Marvel. GIVE ME SOMETHING.


End file.
